


Big Happy Family

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Consensual Infidelity, F/M, Family, Fluff, Humor, Jealousy, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Verse, Parents & Children, Possessive Behavior, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony goes into unexpected heat when Pepper, his alpha, can’t get to him, so she gives him permission for his alpha friends to take care of him.  After all, it might be their only chance to start a family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Big Happy Family

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt at avengerkink:](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/13316.html?thread=31810564#t31810564) (basically same as the summary, full prompt at link)
> 
>  **Author Note:** Guys, I don't even do mpreg. What has omegaverse done to me? :-O

It should have happened before this. 

Steve looked up, concerned, and Tony realized he'd said that out loud.

"What do you mean?" he asked, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, politely keeping Tony's attention on him. And even so Tony could see the tension and faint muscle tremors going through Steve's body as he kept himself under control. Bruce was talking with JARVIS, trying to get ahold of Pepper, while the other Avengers were holding Tony down.

Well, polite was a relative term. Tony's entire body was throbbing, with a painful ache in his gut, and an echoy _empty_ feeling inside him. He was slick with sweat, his thighs glistening with natural lubrication, and he was physically shaking with the need to touch. Even with Clint, Thor, and Natasha holding onto him, giving him the protective, possessive grip he needed, it wasn't enough to completely keep panic at bay. Steve's question was more than welcome.

Because this felt like he was in the peak of heat, but he'd just started an hour ago. He still had another two hours of ramp-up, and Tony needed distraction, anything to keep his mind off the fact that Pepper, his alpha, was in Australia and even if she left the second Bruce and JARVIS got ahold of her, it would take her over twelve hours to get back.

Shit, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have to put him into a medically-induced coma to keep his heat from driving him insane.

Tony swallowed and shook his head to dispel those thoughts and focused on Steve's question.

"Should've happened before this," Tony repeated. He sounded a little breathless, but not bad for an omega in the throes of heat. He'd always been proud of his ability to snark even in bed, making Pepper laugh even as she took him. His ass clenched hard on nothing, and Tony felt another rush of warm slick drenching his thighs. _Don't think about that right now._

"All the shit I did," Tony clarified. "Parties, hook-ups, thought I woulda gone out of season before now."

"I'm glad it didn't," Steve said. "At least we're around to help you."

God, Tony was so relieved that, if this had to happen without his alpha, this had happened with them now. He shuddered to think what could have happened if this had happened in Afghanistan. Luckily his body had been in survival mode after the arc reactor surgery, and he hadn't gone into heat once while he'd been over there. Fuck only knew what the Ten Rings would have done to him if he had.

Tony strangled a cry as a bad throb wracked his body, and Clint and Natasha firmed their grip on his legs and hips, while Thor kept his arms still. It was a little cruel to keep an omega from seeking self-relief, but Tony had made them promise.

\--

The heat had hit long after they'd wrapped up an easy fight, sudden as an asthma attack and twice as unexpected. Tony hadn't even had the luxury of privacy, it had happened so fast, his body suddenly ramping up his hormones right in the middle of a post-mission movie. He'd been painfully aware he was surrounded by five alphas... and twice as painfully aware that Pepper wasn't even in the country. Everyone's head had come up as Tony's heat-scent began to fill the room, his body mercilessly betraying him.

"Hey, I don’t mean to break up the party, but I think the music just changed,” Tony said, trying to smile through the itchy, too-tight feeling of his skin. “I am going to say something Tony Stark has never said in the history of the world – I think I’m going to need some help here.” His banter was strained and finally broke as his heat suddenly seized him in a crushing grip. “Hold me down!" Tony gasped, writhing out of his clothes. God, he was stripping in front of five alphas (or the Asgardian equivalent), and that was so very much not kosher, but they were his friends. And if someone didn't hold him back, didn't keep him from jerking off until he was dry and opening himself up with his hand, he was going to beg the nearest warm body to fuck him. Better to be horny and frustrated rather than horny and mindlessly desperate. He couldn't do this, couldn't betray Pepper, not after all these years. He loved her too much to let a stupid fucking unscheduled heat destroy their trust.

Tony could see something in the Avengers' eyes as they held him still, and during slightly calmer moments, he could see some of the same trust in them. These were friends, good people, good alphas, no, _spectacular_ alphas and friends to do what he asked and not touch a patch of skin more than necessary.

\--

"Tony!"

Banner had gotten through to Pepper. There was a God.

Thor manhandled Tony up enough to see Pepper watching him from the big screen, her face flushed, partially with her usual concern, partially with alpha protectiveness. He needed her. Please, he needed his alpha, his needed Pepper. He needed her touching him, whispering in his ear, taking care of him like she always did. He wanted to kneel in front of her, get her ready for him, and kneel again afterward to clean himself off of her. He needed to feel her inside him, needed to surrender to her like he never submitted to another soul before...

"Tony, I'm over twelve hours away."

Tony knew that, he _knew that_ , but he cried out in frustration anyway, matching her own possessive growl of thwarted lust and affection. 

"It's bad, Pep. Hit me like a train all at once. Need you," Tony gasped out. He didn’t have any clever rejoinders left; he was reduced to bare need.

"I know, Tony. I should be there. I _want_ to be there. This isn't your fault; your body just decided it was time. Everything's been all right and suddenly it's time. You're safe, you're surrounded by friends, you're healthy, of course it's time," she soothed.

"Need you," Tony repeated, feeling his coherency slip. "Pep, please..."

"You could..." Pepper hesitated, and Pepper _never_ hesitated when it came to Tony. He managed to look up to see her catching the eyes of everyone else in the room. "You could let them take care of you. Tony, I trust them, and I know you do too."

The three sets of hands on Tony's body firmed their grip a little more, and Steve and Bruce's knuckles went white where they stood or sat.

"If you want to, and they want to..." Pepper continued. There was another option, medical intervention, but that went unspoken, saved as a last resort. Tony hated having to submit to injections instead of his alpha, and they both knew it. But this... the idea of five strong, dangerous alphas fucking him, satisfying him, filling him up... Tony keened and thrashed a little into their grasp. Steve and Bruce were drifting closer, all the Avengers nodding almost instinctively at Pepper’s unspoken question.

"Tony," Pepper said more sharply, drawing his attention back to her. "I love you. If you want to wait, I’m on the plane now, and we’ll be in the air in five minutes. If you don't, let them take care of you." Pepper swallowed and brought a hand up, pressing against the glass like she was trying to press through it. There was a longing expression on her face that matched Tony's. "We could have a family, Tony. If you pick that, and they are all right with it, I want that too. I love you, no matter what you want to do."

Natasha let go of his hip with one hand and rubbed it on his abdomen, right over his womb. Tony felt almost physically shocked by Pepper’s permission, not to mention the soft, heated chorus of assent from the mouths of his friends. Pepper and he had been talking about having kids for over a year, trying to figure out if Tony was fertile enough, if they could get any of Pepper’s genetic material or would have to find a donor. Pepper was nearly sterile, a problem most alpha females struggled with, and it had been tough to think of whom else might contribute to their kid. Tony hadn’t even thought of the Avengers in that way until his body had suddenly decided that it was going to ring a four-alarm biological clock today.

He and Pepper could have a family. 

“I want that,” Tony said, taking a couple deep breaths to clear his head as much as he could. “I want kids, Pepper, our kids. I want a family with you. Love you.”

“I love you, Tony. I have this, all right?” Pepper unbuttoned the top few buttons of her blouse, let down her hair, and somehow managed to become both sexier and more intimidating at the same time.

“Yeah…” Tony said, letting his head loll as he sagged in the Avengers’ grip, letting his heat pull him under. The ache inside him was getting completely unbearable, but he knew in a second it was all going to be all right.

“Listen up,” she said, with a whipcrack inflection in her voice that would have done Maria Hill proud. Steve, Clint, and Natasha practically snapped to, and even Thor and Bruce looked up at her. “You guys are going to take care of him. Don’t let him take more than he thinks he can. I’ll be watching.” Her expression went a little still, angry and determined and accepting at the same time. “We have one chance at this without having to get doctors involved… Fill him up. Knot him. Breed him.”

Tony could hear the low growls in the throats of the Avengers as they let their inner alphas come out to play at those inflammatory words. He’d never been so turned on in his life, hearing Pepper’s voice with a half-dozen strong hands on him, commanding his most basic, innermost desires. This was his omega hormones taking over, and Tony knew it, but right now he couldn’t care about that. He just needed…

Thor didn’t waste a second after Pepper’s command. It took him one motion to free his cock from the confines of his armor, and just a second to find Tony’s swollen and pulsating entrance and sheath himself right to the hilt. Tony screamed and bucked so hard Steve and Bruce had to add their strength to the others’ to keep him steady. Thor was beautifully thick and long and just like a drink of cold water in the desert, completely satisfying as he fucked smoothly and relentlessly into Tony’s slick channel. Permission granted, Clint and Natasha attacked him from either side, mouths and hands dancing over his chest, attacking his sensitive nipples and caressing over his navel. 

Steve descended over his mouth, plundering it ruthlessly with those strong lips and tongue, capturing Tony’s cries inside him. Bruce shuffled closer, between Tony’s legs, and made Tony suddenly cry out into Steve’s mouth as Bruce’s mouth closed over his neglected and sensitive cock. His hands slid along Tony’s thighs, gliding through the wetness there as Thor fucked it out of him, going deep, then deeper, before shifting his grip and coming with a growl like thunder. His knot filled Tony completely, and for the first time since this started, Tony felt a little bit of relief.

Thor’s big hand moved over Tony’s stomach and he leaned down to talk in his ear.

“Did you remember I am a god of fertility as well as thunder?” Thor said, his hand firm and his cock feeling harder than ever. Tony’s eyes rolled up as Bruce did something wonderful with his tongue, and came with a feeling of pure bliss. A few tears might have even leaked out. “It is certain you will have at least one child now.”

Steve released Tony’s mouth long enough for him to say one word, “More.” Thor shuddered in ecstasy as Tony’s body clamped down on him. The heat had him completely in its thrall now, and he could only feel good, no matter what was done to him. It was a really good thing Pepper was watching. Somebody in this room (relatively speaking) had to have a clear head.

“Give him more,” Pepper commanded. “Trust me, he needs more.”

Thor simply held Tony as the others played him like an instrument, Pepper directing the song. Hands and lips were all over him, making him feel safe and wanted, fulfilling the biological hard-wiring that wanted him to be protected as he was taken. Tony’s eyes fluttered open and he locked gazes with Pepper even as five alphas mauled his body in the most glorious way possible. Fuck, he wanted her here so damn much. He could see her taking charge in the bedroom, ordering five of the toughest alphas on the planet around to make sure Tony was satisfied. What he wouldn’t give to see her facing down Cap like she owned him.

_Note to self: see if Pepper would be up for some roleplay later, because that would be hot._

Tony grinned to himself during a small lull in his heat, but shivered as Thor’s knot finally subsided. The empty feeling returned, his fever spiked, and Tony felt his eyes glazing as the throbbing began again.

“Steve next,” Pepper said, one hand moving slightly just off-screen. Was Pepper stroking herself, watching the others take him? Oh please let JARVIS be recording that…

Thor pulled out of him and Steve slid into his place like they’d rehearsed this a thousand times. 

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” Steve whispered, sliding inside Tony, one thick arm slung around his chest. “Do you have any idea how good you smell? I wasn’t even jealous of Pepper before now.” Steve’s thrusts picked up, and the others had to hold on to keep Tony in place. “To know that you want this, want what I have, for you and for her? It’s incredible. I had no idea you wanted a family.” Steve’s mouth was against Tony’s ear, but he kept his eyes on Pepper. “Thank you.”

Tony felt himself opening up for Steve, a different size and shape than Thor, but God, so sweet, so hot… Steve kept up his endearments the entire time, soft and effusive praise for both of them, mollifying Pepper’s protective instincts. He must have come for two minutes when he reached his peak, and his knot didn’t go down for nearly an hour and a half. Tony felt full, his belly distended by Steve’s come, almost certain he could feel the very instant Steve’s seed took root alongside Thor’s, but couldn’t stop. He didn’t dare. The life they all led, this could be his only chance.

“Bruce,” Pepper said, her eyes luminous as she picked her omega’s next mate. The radiation in Bruce’s blood could have made him sterile, but then again it also should have killed him. He was more than likely far more potent than anyone could have guessed.

Bruce didn’t have the generous endowments of Thor and Steve, but he fucked like his life depended on it, pulling Tony’s hair to make him bare his throat to Pepper. He bit into Tony’s neck at Pepper’s magnanimous nod, and growled in low tones, sounding almost frighteningly Hulk-like for a minute.

“He’s close,” Bruce whispered in his ear when Tony’s eyes had flown open. “He likes it. Fuck, Tony, he likes seeing me fucking you. Seeing me inside you and knowing you’ll have something of ours forever.”

 _Fuck._ Who knew that Bruce Banner, of all people, had such a breeding kink? All that repressed… everything Bruce had, Tony figured, had to come out somehow.

Bruce was wound tight around Tony, almost not letting the others get in their relentless caresses as his knot slowly subsided. It actually took Pepper snarling at him, as animalistic a tone as Tony had ever heard her take, to get him to back off.

“Shit,” Bruce whispered, touching Tony’s jaw and turning him towards him for a soft kiss. “Got carried away, sorry.”

“That’s why I’m watching,” Pepper said tightly, making Bruce jerk himself back. “Clint, take him.”

Tony sighed in languid contentment, brain feeling mushy from heat, as Clint manhandled him into position and slammed home. He was on his side, one leg held up so Clint had full access, fucking into him with athletic coordination that made Tony feel it in entirely new places. Thor had one massive hand around Tony’s member, coaxing another orgasm out of him, while Steve and Natasha took possession of his neck and mouth.

“You feel so good,” Clint gasped out, his hands running up and down Tony’s thighs, spreading him wide so Clint could get even further in. “Tell me you want it. Come on, Tony, tell us.”

Steve let go of his lips and moved his mouth down to Tony’s chest, tangling his hand with Clint’s across the arc reactor.

“Want it…” Tony said, hips moving almost mindlessly, chasing Clint’s knot. He’d been filled and knotted three times, but it could never be enough, not how he felt now. He was half out of his mind with need, but Pepper’s voice from the screen suddenly grounded him.

“He wants it,” she said, her voice rough. “He needs this, needs you. He’s safe with you. Tony, you’re doing so well.”

He could barely think, and that was terrifying whenever he could manage a thought about it. His mind had always been the most reliable thing around him, except for right now.

“I got you,” Clint said, and sucked in a breath as he came, knotting deep inside. Tony could feel the heat from Clint mingling with the others, held from escaping, Clint sealing everything inside. He made a low, needy noise in his throat, and Pepper didn’t even have to remind the others to tend to him, distract him with pleasure as Clint panted into his neck and pushed in just a little deeper, a little bit more. Solid, real, here. Not as big as Thor or Steve, not as inherently dangerous as Bruce, but still warm and close and wanted. 

Tony shuddered and sighed as Bruce rejoined the fray, hands on his hips, pushing him back onto Clint to make them both groan. Fuck, he couldn’t remember being this hot in his life, this desperate, craving what everyone was giving him and barely able to speak about it. 

“My turn,” Natasha said after a long while, when Tony made a tiny whimpering sound as Clint finally was able to pull away. All four of the others lifted Tony and lowered him bonelessly onto Natasha’s cock, slimmer and curved, so much more like Pepper’s that it almost worked perfectly. Tony found his coordination again, if not his strength, and Pepper, bless her, figured it out within seconds.

“Help him,” Pepper said, her voice sounding distorted through the haste of lust and the blood thundering in his ears. “Get him up. Let him do what he needs to.” Steve and Thor got Tony positioned on his hands and knees, holding him up and fucking him back against Natasha like a puppet. Bruce and Clint crawled between them and under him, tweaking and pinching and caressing to get more noises out of him, counterpoint to the soft, high cries Natasha was wringing out of him. 

“You’re good, Tony,” she said. “You’ve got… a gift. You’re so…” Natasha shook as she increased her pace, the almost-familiar drag inside him making him squeeze her hard in excitement. Almost there, almost… so close… “You’re so _tight,_ ” she said in honest wonder, and slammed her hips in like she was stabbing for the heart. He screamed high and broken when she dug her fingernails into his hips, a swell of heat and the familiar pressure filling him again as she let herself go. Clint swallowed around him as Bruce molested his neck, Thor and Steve’s hands holding him steady as Natasha collapsed over his back.

Tony reached one weak hand up to caress his stomach, bulging slightly from everything they’d given him, and shook his way through the aftershocks of his orgasm. The others crowded close, adding their body heat to his, a tight and needful tangle as Natasha kept her hold on him.

\--

“Beautiful.”

Tony looked up as Natasha pulled out of him, fast, and almost turned to shoot her an annoyed look. Almost, because when he looked up, Pepper was there. In the flesh. And nothing else.

The heat still held him in its grip, and though it wasn’t quite so bad as it had been, it still took Tony a second to do the math of why Pepper was standing there for real.

He’d been being bred for over twelve hours.

 _Wow,_ he managed inanely, heat still making him a little stupid. _I… **wow**_.

“And mine,” Pepper added, with a feral little growl that put a pleasant shiver down Tony’s spine and ramped up the remains of his heat. He might have been in heat all this time, but Pepper had had to watch other people mate with him. Even if everything had been all on the up and up, that would put a strain on any red-blooded alpha.

Tony smiled at her as he made it up the only way he could, shifting and presenting, submitting himself to the woman he loved. (There would be video evidence later, but Tony knew it would only take this memory to get him off again forever.) Everyone else ceased to exist as Pepper loomed over him, her lips meeting his for satisfying kiss as she slid into him. Tony made a wordless noise of contentment as she fitted into him, hitting exactly where he needed, her desire so long denied she barely lasted five strokes before reclaiming him from the inside out.

Tony could feel her embarrassed blush against his cheek, but didn’t mind at all. He took her hand and dragged it to his stomach, laying it over the slight swell there and holding it in place with his own. Yes, he was being heat-dopey, but really there was nothing to be done. JARVIS would keep the footage _very_ private for him.

“Love you,” he said, his voice rough from the hours of non-stop heat. Pepper kissed the side of his neck, overlaying the marks she found there before finally looking up at the other Avengers, slightly disheveled and torn somewhere between smug, apologetic, relieved, and satisfied.

“Thank you,” Pepper said, with as much dignity as she could muster.

“We’ll leave you two alone, ma’am,” Steve said, far too formal for a post gangbang breeding orgy, but then again that was how he rolled. Natasha didn’t quite roll her eyes as she nodded politely at both of them and tugged the rest of the Avengers out of the room. Eyes lingered on Tony before the door finally shut behind them, and someone latched it firmly.

Pepper smiled indulgently at that, but didn’t budge from checking out Tony from head to toe, still locked inside him.

“All right?” she whispered, once the others had left.

“Perfect,” he said back, and kissed her again. “I think we did it.”

“I know we did, Tony.”

\--

“When it rains, it pours,” Tony said, lying back on the exam table and running a hand over the gravid mound of his stomach. “I think there’s a football team in here. Fuck, I really hope Thor doesn’t tend to throw triplets or something, because that man is _large_. I’ve got five months to go and I already feel like a beached whale.”

Pepper snorted with amusement as the doctor and nurse came in with the ultrasound machine, and twined her hand with Tony’s. “You don’t look like a beached whale,” she said, brushing hair away from his forehead.

“What’s the betting pool today, doc?” Tony said, carefully tugging the too-tight shirt up and over to expose his skin. “Five? Six? I think we’ve managed to increase our kid count nearly every visit.”

The doctor tried not to laugh. “Apologies, Mr. Stark, but given the rather… unusual nature of your last heat, getting an accurate count has been challenging. You were extraordinarily fertile during conception, and had quite a few donors competing for the honors, so we’re in unusual territory.” She carefully examined Tony’s abdomen, her hands putting gentle pressure on the sides.

“My womb _is_ unusual, unplotted territory,” Tony said. “It was El Dorado!”

The nurse stifled a guffaw as he warmed up the gel and Pepper laughed outright.

Several minutes later, the nurse accepted a twenty dollar bill from Doctor Graff, and Tony was feeling extremely vindicated as he pulled his shirt back down.

“I told you. Five,” Tony said triumphantly. “El Dorado yields a mighty treasure.”

“Well,” Doctor Graff said, managing to get herself back under control. “I know you lead a very different life, Mr. Stark, but I cannot stress enough that you have to take it easy. Being pregnant with so many at your age, and with your medical history, is inherently risky.”

“Yadda, yadda, you don’t scare me. Now, when Bruce Banner, who may or may not be the babies’ donor, tells me to take it easy, _then_ I listen. And I also listen to the god of thunder, Captain America, a guy who can shoot me before I even see him, and a woman who can kill men with her thighs. Not to mention my wife. _All_ of whom could be the donors. So, yes. Easy. Taking it,” Tony said, hands up defensively.

Doctor Graff conceded defeat, and left them alone in the room.

“Do you miss it?” Pepper asked. That was what she worried about the most, that “taking it easy” might be too hard on Tony, who’d run before he could walk, who’d thrown himself into unbelievable danger every day. She’d been so worried the first few months, terrified that Tony might try to get back to being Iron Man “as long as he could,” that she’d had more than a few sleepless nights. But it had helped, like Tony said, that he had five other alphas, all potential donors of his kids, who were determined to see him safe.

“’Course I do,” Tony said. He looked up at her concerned face and smiled disarmingly. “Hey, Rhodey’s being a good bro and filling in for me. I can coordinate things from the Tower _without_ going out there and risking the team.” Tony patted his stomach and grinned.

“Don’t call them a team…” Pepper laughed

“We’ve got five kids on the way! That’s a basketball team, right there! Our own mini-Avengers.”

“ _Don’t_ let the others hear you say that or they’ll stick you in cotton wool for the next five months.”

“Hey.” Tony’s voice went soft and sincere, the way it only usually went when they were behind closed doors. “You know I’d never risk the kids.”

Pepper looked back at Tony, at the faint glow the arc reactor through his shirt. “I know.”

\--

Tony blinked the sweat out of his eyes and reached out to touch the tiny hand of the little blond boy Pepper held in her arms. Their son gripped Tony’s finger even as he kept firmly latched onto Pepper’s nipple. (Oh, Tony had been so, _so_ incredibly glad sympathetic bonding hormones had worked on Pepper to activate her milk, because while the thought of growing his own breasts had been sexy in the abstract, they would have hurt like a sonofabitch with the arc reactor in the way. Besides, he’d been carrying sextuplets (not quintuplets, the doctor owed him twenty for not noticing their sneaky little daughter hiding behind her siblings on the ultrasounds) for nine months and his body could use a damn break.) Their tiny little red-haired daughter was nursing from Pepper’s other breast, while their other four ( _four!_ ) kids had a host of nurses tending to them just across the room.

“He looks just like Steve,” Pepper said, smiling beatifically down at their kids. 

“They all look like… but that couldn’t… could it?” Ok, yes, Tony wasn’t being terribly coherent, and he knew it, but he’d been in labor for almost twenty-four hours to get the entire family out and breathing air, so some excuses were going to be made, thank you very much.

“Actually, they could,” Doctor Graff said, walking in the room and flipping several pieces of paper on a clipboard. “Mr. Stark, you told me during conception you had knotted intercourse with six alphas over a sixteen-hour period, correct?”

“If you’re fishing for details, I don’t kiss and tell,” Tony said primly. He tried to sit up a little straighter and stopped himself immediately. His abdominal muscles were _not_ happy with him. “But very short story, yeah. Who was the lucky winner, for medical record purposes and all?”

“Ah… bingo,” Doctor Graff said, looking a little stunned as she turned the page around for their perusal. “Six for six.”

Tony’s jaw dropped. So did Pepper’s.

“But I wasn’t fertile enough!” Pepper nearly sputtered, keeping herself still only because she had a baby in each arm. “All the doctors told me…”

“I’ve been working with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical staff, and ah, I believe Mr. Odinsson is a god of fertility?”

Doctor Graff sounded like she didn’t believe that was coming out of her own mouth. _Eh, she’ll get used it,_ Tony thought. This was the world everyone lived in, post-Avengers.

“That’s the story,” Pepper said in a strangled voice.

“I’ll go over the technical details later when you’re both more alert, but in short, he opened up the playing field. Everyone got a fair shot, and everyone took it, so to speak.” She cleared her throat a little and gestured at the children in Pepper’s arms. “Ms. Potts, this little girl is yours. Your son, well, he looks like Steve Rogers because he is his donor.” The lithe brunet boy came from Clint, the tough little redhead was Natasha’s. The sandy-haired girl was from Bruce, and the blond boy that had topped the scales of all their kids and made Tony nearly wish for death (or mostly-illegal painkillers) during his birth was Thor’s. Six kids. From six donors. Tony grinned so widely his cheeks hurt.

“Tony, so help me if you say anything about mini-Avengers, I’m going to make you laugh,” Pepper threatened.

“I won’t say it, but I’ll be thinking about it,” Tony said, but didn’t drop his smile. “Pepper…” His eyes lit up as he caught her gaze, and she almost stopped breathing by the love she saw there. “Thanks.”

Pepper understood then what he meant. _Thank you for letting our friends take care of me that day. Thank you for being understanding, for seeing a positive side I’d been too afraid to see. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for letting this miracle be possible._

“Let’s get the aunts and uncles in here,” Pepper said, pushing past a brief flicker of jealousy as easily as looking at the daughter in her arms. “I think we’re going to need their help.”

“I know we are.” Tony kept his eyes on his mate and children as they called in the rest of their friends to meet their family.


End file.
